Being a big fan of the first game of the Panzer General series as I am, is a great honor for me to give any kind of help in the development of its sequels and the inspired games sequels like Panzer Corps 2.

As it is, Panzer Corps 1 somehow looks much more similar to the old Panzer General 1 for me than the others SSI games, like Panzer General 2, etc. considering that in terms of the development of the PG series, SSI have made many mistakes and we should for certainly learn from them to keep up developing the good game the new PC2 can be.

So, my contributions, here it is some points I consider important, I hope it could help the development somehow:

1º- The graphics:

In my opinion, one of the biggests mistakes SSI have made back then was their focus on getting the graphics "beautiful" by adding graphic effects, many unecessary details and 3D textures, of which we can see more clearly in their late versions of the game, like Panzer General 3D. But even Panzer General 2 had changed many things from the 1.

For me, at least, I found it terrible because I was quite keen to how the game graphics were composed and worked out in PG1. I mean, the way the game looked like, as they represented their war map. Every time I played Panzer General it felt like I really was some general or Feldmarschall, commanding the units and thinking the strategy towards the objectives present in the map. I managed to even keep the animations of the fights on as the binocular aspects of it usually gave me a even more immersive feeling of the role a general has. Yet, Panzer General stood somehow in a mid term between games focused on passing the visual of a real war map, like “Gary Grigsby's War in the East” and others of easy gameplay in which graphics are seen just as a priority as the gameplay is.

To talk about a bit more on this issue, we can pick the units shown in the Panzer General 1 map as a example: they weren't displayed in a soberb 3 dimentions with absolute realistic detail, they were full 2D, but also very well defined and sintetized within the game, looking nice despite it's time. Considering how the latter games reliesed from SSI went so different from their early one, it's quite impressive on how Panzer Corps managed to keep this very important feeling of a "war map" without looking just like a simple board game.

Anyway, complex and detailed graphics not always will fit well into a game, and they have to be thought carefully since they can spoil many things if not presented as they should be. And I think there's not much room for a game with the PG gameplay without the feel of a war map.

2º – Mechanics:

The good thing about a strategic game is how much possibilities it can bring to the player and for doing this, it is important to make the player stop for while thinking of which availible options would be better to take at any specific moment. In my opinion, a downside of Panzer Corps comparing to the old Panzer General is the fact that the former looked like more “locked” in terms of possibilities than the latter. Players had one track to follow and going out of this path would heavily compromise the battle results. So, the main purpose of the game is to "find" the only path and keep strong into it. This reduces completely the possibility of replay. Despite it's very similar maps, Panzer General somehow managed to gave us a broad impression of different possibilities, I think (I have to mention that I didn't played Panzer Corps sequels yet, like the North Afrika scenarios and all, so I don't know if they're different).

On the other hand, there's modes for Panzer Corps that somehow try to change that feel, like Battlefield Europe. Yet, here we have the quite opposite problem: the broadness of Battlefield Europe. Despite being very realistic and giving the player the notion of controlling the war with many different options, BE have a very big and complex map for a player to control with too much information to deal with at the same time.

Well, considering these two problems I was talking about, what Panzer Corps 2 could do?
I think the best solution for PC2 is to make a sum between these different gameplays. To do so, I think there's another game which could serve as a reference: the first of the “Shogun, Total War” series. Specifically it's concept of two different maps of gameplay. One strategic and the other tactic. In the old Panzer General, the only strategic options the game actually gave the players was choosing sometimes which map to follow in the campaign's path, like “North Afrika” or “Balkans” scenarios after the fall of France with a minor victory, for example.

Therefore, it would be nice to have a strategic map focusing in the military “big war” objectices, like oil, industries, enemy connection routes, etc. with a small bit of diplomacy, and a tactical one, focusing on what points your army have to pursue to accomplish those aims you specified first in the strategic map. This strategic map should give us the option of building our own Barbarossa, for example. Changing the routes of the forces and with a flexible and broad range of deployment. It has also to follow the WWII historic coesion as well, and if the player choose to follow the same path taken in WWII, the game have to emulate the same results which happened back then.

Yet it has to come with a simple interface, easy to operate, as the tactic gameplay of how to put the plans into practice should compose the bulk of the game.
One of the best things Panzer General had is it's simple, intuitive gameplay. It doesn't take you hours of reading manuals to learn how to play the game despite having a very deep complexity. Considering this, I think the strategic map have to be just a bit more complex than the “path options” Panzer General 1 gave us.

The tactical map, on the other hand, should be made more broad. As I said before, not as broad as Battlefield Europe, comprising almost the hole war, but it should at least consider the entire three fronts of invasion of Barbarossa, for example, instead only the Heeres Group Center advance towards Minsk and Smolesnk. There's no much secret about it. Maybe Creating the maps following each operation. Like Typhoon, Fall Blau, etc.

So, those are my main suggestions for the game. Hope it could help somehow.

My best regards, Brontoburguer.

Last edited by Brontoburguer on Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:02 pm, edited 11 times in total.

i agree on campaign map.. one of the shortcomings of Grand Campaigns for PC was the fact, player couldnt associate those maps to actual Front situation.. sometimes you started on top, sometimes from bottom, maps were just square areas.. while original PG maps had clear geography, player could easily associate with locations..

So for PC2, you should consider creating larger maps, even consisting whole country war is waged in.. so for Poland campaign, you would have entire Poland on it..

GTPG and Legacy of Versailles use large maps. These have some good points, but also end up with very long games that require a lot of planning and concentration. Smaller maps with restricted unit numbers can also provide excellent challenges. Neither is best. The trick is to have an engine that can cope acceptably within both extremes - Panzer Corps does pretty well, but a few extra tweaks (mostly relating to editor settings, number of zones, triggers and scripting - especially the ability to deploy and command by groups of units rather than by zones) would make it easier to create larger scenarios which have a bit of variability.

--> i don't agree. If you make a beautiful game u will attract a lot of players. If U want to keep no detailed graphics, u will keep also your game from a lot of players who don't even try to play it just because of poor graphic!
Why are wargames not so popular? it is not the complexity, it is the poor graphics! each time i try to convert my son or my friend to wargames, it is THE reason!they say me :" wow it is too ugly ! "

my custom single player mini-campaign in order of battle : normandie-niemen:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=374&t=79333&p=676302#p676302

jeff00t wrote:"complex and detailed graphics not always will fit well into a game"

--> i don't agree. If you make a beautiful game u will attract a lot of players. If U want to keep no detailed graphics, u will keep also your game from a lot of players who don't even try to play it just because of poor graphic!
Why are wargames not so popular? it is not the complexity, it is the poor graphics! each time i try to convert my son or my friend to wargames, it is THE reason!they say me :" wow it is too ugly ! "

Well, jeff00t, I don't know if you notice, but I mentioned "beautiful" with quotation marks because I think it's important to keep in mind that highest graphics capabilities not always will result in a beaultful graphic aspect on the game. I'm not actually against graphic investment on a game, I just think graphics have to be thought carefully as they can spoil many things of gameplay if they don't get well fitted.

And I think if we would to check peoples preferences, I think most people would prefer a better gameplay rather than better graphics. But this doesn't mean that we can't reconcile both things together. There's always a balance.

Yet, graphics can be a matter of taste as well. So, one just can't please everybody wishes.